


Ferris Wheel (The Main Attraction)

by DesdemonaKaylose



Series: Bottom Shelf [3]
Category: Hunter X Hunter
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), M/M, Other, Polyamory, Threesome - M/M/Other, carnivals, dominant Gon, this is the most niche thing I've ever written
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-26
Updated: 2016-05-26
Packaged: 2018-06-09 22:03:58
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,634
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6925135
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/DesdemonaKaylose/pseuds/DesdemonaKaylose
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Killua tries to be a supportive friend but mostly he's just a jealous friend.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Ferris Wheel (The Main Attraction)

**Author's Note:**

> One commenter wanted to know if this series was going to veer off into gon/hisoka/killua territory, and I am proud to inform you, belatedly, that thanks to that specific comment: Yes. Yes it is.
> 
> Anyways, due to the open nature of the relationship if I ever write anything else in this universe it won't necessarily also have Killua in it.

The gym of the week was located at the edge of the city proper, not too far from the local prison, and so it was fairly well equipped for large aggressive men who regularly punched away their personal frustrations in a haze of resentful testosterone. Killua gave it maybe three more days before either he or Gon broke something valuable enough to get them kicked out.

He looked over to Gon, who was currently sliding every weight he could find onto the deadlift bar. It wasn’t that they were careless—not particularly so, anyway—it was just that most machines outside of the Association and the Heaven’s Arena and the Zoldyck private dungeon weren’t made to accommodate guys like them. They’d been banned from two other reputable gyms in York Shin before, on previous trips, and pretty soon they were going to have to work their way out through the smaller ones in the boroughs if they wanted to keep up any semblance of regular strength training.

Killua watched Gon testing the weight in his palms, tossing it like so much pizza crust. Maybe they could just start lifting industrial debris from the construction site next to their hotel and cut out the middle man.

But then again, gym time was important for other, more personal reasons too. Alluka had zero interest in buffing up—and honestly, he had always had this selfish desire to keep her away from all of that for as long as possible—and was perfectly content to watch her shows on the bed in the hotel room for a couple hours in the afternoons while the boys did their fighter type things. Which meant this was the only time that Killua really had alone with Gon. And there were some things… some things he didn’t really want to talk about in front of his little sister.

It was nostalgic, staying with Gon in his rooms in the city, but it was also a little bit... weird. There were some things (habits, touches, jokes) Killua had always thought of as pretty normal but now suddenly seemed _off_ when Alluka tilted her head and watched them, silently, until Killua had to make an excuse to break away and leave. And he'd never thought of it as strange that the two of them used to share beds all the time when they were traveling, until Alluka pointed it out.

Gon seemed to have finally gotten the weight right. The center bar bent gently under the considerable strain of the stacks on each end. Other men around the gym were regarding him with a range of expressions from bewilderment to interest. Gon drew _looks_ , Killua was noticing, especially lately. A lot of them admittedly from Killua himself. It was the shorts, he had decided with no little despair. Gon was very nearly out of his teens and still wearing those provocative little shorts, with no regard for the health or sanity of those around him. They were almost definitely giving certain types the wrong idea.

Speaking of which.

“So,” Killua said, setting down his water bottle. “You’re going out tonight… with Hisoka.”

Gon blinked at him over the bar of the straining weight. “That’s right,” he said. He politely didn’t add on the “duh” that Killua half expected.

“On a… date.”

“On a date.”

Killua scowled. “Didn’t they try to kill you again a while ago?”

“Sparring gets a little intense.” Gon shrugged, weights and all. “I wouldn’t say we were trying to _kill_ each other.”

“I can’t believe you’re still with them,” Killua grumbled. “Do you just go out with any old weirdo that asks you on a date?”

“I asked them, actually,” Gon corrected absently. He was working his way through a rep, but it didn’t seem to be intense enough to stop him from talking. “You always get so prickly when I try to tell you about it, I guess you wouldn’t know that part.”

“Well why shouldn’t I get prickly?” Killua said. “Who wants to hear about their best friend banging a party clown?”

Gon let out a breath that was more or less a sigh. “I wish you two could get along,” he said. “Hisoka likes _you._ ”

“Sure they like me,” Killua muttered, “they already have you, don’t they? They don’t have to worry about anything now.”

“Worry?”

“They’re at the top, they snagged the boyfriend spot,” Killua said, “competition over.”

“Top?” Gon echoed. “Killua, I don’t rank my friends. I love all of you.”

“Yeah, well you don’t have _sex_ with _me_.”

Gon gave him an interested look and dropped the weight bar entirely, ignoring the way it crashed into the ground and fractured the flooring. “Would you like to?” he said.

“What?”

Gon made his way over to the bench where Killua was sitting and paused there, in front of him. “Would you like to have sex with me?” he asked. “Is that what this is about?”

“No!” Killua said, and then, “I mean,” and then, “Don’t just _ask_ me things like that!”

“Sorry,” Gon said, clearly unapologetic. “But you know you can just ask, right?”

“ _No_ ,” Killua said, crossing his arms, “I _can’t_ , because that would be _weird.”_

“But I like Killua,” Gon said, leaning in close. Fuck, Killua had half a mind to shield his eyes from the impossible brightness that was Gon Freecs. “And if Killua is interested…”

“It’s not like that! It’s just—” Killua tossed a leg over the other side of the bench, turning away. “I was here first, you know? I put in the time, I traveled with you, by any fair measure it should have been me you asked out but somehow _they_ got there first.”

“I dunno,” Gon said, “you sound kinda jealous to me.”

Killua risked a look back at Gon again. Beautiful, of course, even sweating and wearing gym clothes, with hips that were just this side of feminine and biceps that could probably level cities—well anyone would want to fuck that, honestly, there wasn't anything remarkable about the fact that Killua had _eyes_.

“It wouldn’t matter even if I was interested,” Killua said, “which I’m _not_ , but if I _was_ , you’ve already got Hisoka and only an absolute asshole would make you break up with somebody just so you could get with him instead.”

“Huh? But I already told you, we’re not like that. Hisoka doesn’t care who else I see.”

Killua rolled his eyes. “Gon, you’re a good guy but you’re kind of twisted sometimes. Pardon me if I find it kind of hard to believe that the terrifying thing you’re dating is as much on the free love train as you are.”

“He’s got a point,” said a man in a bandanna as he passed behind the two of them on the way to the water fountain. “Most people will assume their relationship is monogamous without bothering to have a conversation about it first.”

Gon and Killua both watched him go, their shoulders sinking in unison. Ah, one of these days they were going to successfully hold a full personal conversation without broadcasting it to every person in earshot. Killua noted at least five people blatantly eavesdropping, and not even sorry enough to look away when he glared at them.

All at once, Gon lit up. “You should talk to Hisoka,” he said, turning back. “You’ll see, you’re wrong about all of it.”

“I’m _not_ gonna ask them ‘cause I know I’m right.”

“Well,” Gon said, “if you’re so sure then you’ve got nothing to lose do you? Hisoka’s staying at the same hotel as us, you could just walk up and ask them yourself. But you’re gonna be wrong, so…”

“I am _not_ wrong, you wait and see,” Killua snapped back.

And that was how Killua found himself standing in front of the door to the penthouse, his feet all but glued to the carpet. He was strong, sure, but Hisoka was… _Hisoka_. Hisoka was huge, and merciless, and had known him when he was just a snot-nosed little twerp. Besides which, Killua had never been one to pick real fights, let alone fair ones. He wasn’t like Gon, who thrived on being challenged and willingly dated a person who regularly tried to kick his ass.

Stop him if you’ve heard this one already. So this eighteen-year-old asshole walks into a known murderer’s hotel room and asks them how they would feel about some other guy boning their boyfriend…? Killua couldn’t help but predict the punchline would come at his expense. He looked around the hallway. It was a nice hotel. There was gold paint along the edges of the walls and the carpet was one of those old fashioned red ones with the artsy swirls and dragons. Killua pictured how it would look with a human body smashed through it.

Still, he was not going to be called a coward by the guy who insisted his datefriend was just a slightly more-murderous-than-average kitty cat, honestly, not that scary when you get to know them.

Killua reached out and knocked, once a little too softly and then again a little too hard, and shoved his incompetent fist into his pocket. There was a soft shifting from beyond the door, ominous as the feathers of a carrion bird, and then it swung open.

“Ooh,” Hisoka said, settling against the door frame, “what have we here?”

Even in heels, Hisoka was only an inch or two taller than Killua now. Somehow that leering slouch made it feel like an entire foot.

“Hey,” Killua ground out, hunching up a little bit under the scrutiny.

“What an unexpected surprise,” Hisoka said. They narrowed their eyes, golden and full of malevolent amusement. “Would you like to come in?”

What kind of coffin would they bury Killua in? Hopefully something lightweight and unlocked so he could crawl back out of it and _haunt the bastard friend who sent him up here to die._

“Sure,” he said. “I guess.”

Hisoka drew back and gestured towards the interior of the room, the elegant curve of their fingers highlighting the pristine, unlived-in details. There was hardly a wrinkle in the duvet. As Killua stepped past them, deliberately not flinching back when they leaned in a fraction closer, he spotted a pair of boots slung haphazardly across the floor at the foot of the bed. They didn’t take them off at the door? Okay, well then, Killua wouldn’t either.

Hisoka dropped onto the foot of their bed, ankles crossed delicately as they leaned back onto their wrists, looking for all the world like a coquettish teenager inviting a boy into her bedroom. The tilt of the chin was just on the mocking side of deliberately innocent. Hisoka had striking eyes, like an animal’s, intense enough that Killua—who was trained to kill all sorts of guard-animals ranging from dogs to tigers—couldn’t manage to hold it for long. He looked away, irritated, towards the porcelain lamp on the armoire.

“What can I do for you, Killua my sweet?” Hisoka asked. From the dark smile in their voice, Killua’s discomfort hadn’t escaped them.

“Gon made me come,” Killua said, because he was feeling as cowardly as he was put-upon.

There was a minute shift in the energy of the room, as if a light had been turned on. Killua risked a glance aside at Hisoka, and found them tensed with a sudden interest that would have been imperceptible to anyone who couldn’t read auras. Outwardly, they were unchanged.

“He did, did he?”

Well Hisoka wasn’t the only one who could keep an airy façade. Probably that was the biggest thing they had in common, they two transmuters: their tightly controlled masks of feigned coolness.

“Personally I think it’s pointless,” Killua said, shrugging. “It’s a lot of trouble for a dumb argument, but he’s so stubborn.”

Hisoka tilted their head, waiting. Cats play with their food. Cats played with whatever they caught, food or not. Killua found it pretty unlikely that Hisoka had bought into his casual outward appearance, but still they didn’t pounce.

“Gon assumes everyone is like him,” Killua went on, “thinks like him, you know? Even though the two of you are almost nothing alike.”

“The two of us?” Hisoka echoed. They uncrossed and recrossed their legs, the toes of their boots pointed as they swung left leg over right, like a dancer. There was something about the smoothness of the motion, you couldn’t stop yourself from following the elegant line of their calf. Killua switched his attention back to the expensive lamp before his eye could be drawn any higher.

“You’re probably the jealous type,” Killua said, “I mean, powerful guys usually are.”

“I believe Gon told you I’m not precisely a _guy_ ,” Hisoka remarked, perfectly benign despite Killua’s immediate, sinking dread. What a stupid slip-up, and him trying his hardest not to get killed here. But Hisoka only smiled blandly, even their aura unruffled.

“Right,” Killua said, “sure. I just meant, people who put so much effort into being strong and winning, they’re usually people who don’t like their territory stepped in.”

“I suppose that’s true,” Hisoka said, “in general. I’ve never thought of myself as particularly jealous, though.”

“Well you say that,” Killua shot back, “because no one is stupid enough to, but it would be different if really someone tried to take something of yours.”

“I’m a creature of few possessions.”

“But you like Gon.”

Hisoka said, slowly, “I do.” Their gaze was heavier now, penetrating against the hard shell of Killua’s composure.

Killua reeled himself in, crossed his arms loosely and straightened himself out. “So what if someone tried to take Gon away from you?” he asked, trying not to come across as too eager.

“Normally I would say, do you mean _kill him_ ,” Hisoka said, “but I can tell that’s not what you mean at all. What you mean is, what if someone tried to make theirs what is currently mine?”

“Right. What then? You’d have to be jealous then.”

Hisoka sat forward, clasped their hands over their knees. “You seem to be under the mistaken impression that Gon is a possession of mine,” they said. “Gon doesn’t belong to me any more than you belong to… say… Illumi. Owning people is so dull and predictable.”

“So you’d just let him fuck whoever he wanted,” Killua snapped.

Hisoka lifted their beautifully arched brows. Compared to Hisoka’s coolness, Killua could feel how hot his own face was, how tense his body was, with excruciating clarity. So much for natural transmuter deceptiveness.

“Oh _my_ , Killua,” they said. “I thought we were playing a little game, but you just got right to the point didn’t you?”

“There’s no way you would,” Killua pushed on, fighting down the flush that was threatening his cheeks. “Sure, you’re probably pretty talented in bed, but Gon is young and popular and there’s no way you’d risk letting him out from under your supervision in that way. He could decide he prefers somebody else. You like control too much to allow that possibility.”

“You certainly seem fixated on what Gon and I do between the sheets,” Hisoka purred.

“I am _not!”_

Deliberately, like the unstoppable slow deadliness of an earthslide, Hisoka unfolded from their seat on the bed and made their way to Killua. Killua went perfectly still, tensed to flee at the first sign of violence, but Hisoka only tapped a nail to their own lip.

“It’s hard isn’t it,” they said, eyes bright with cruel mirth. “To watch him and not want him. Not to hunger for just a taste. You can almost imagine that sweetness, can’t you, when the sunlight hits him just right?”

Killua said nothing. Would it be better to run now? But with predators, it’s usually motion that sets them off. If you just stay still—

Hisoka leant in. They leant close enough that the warmth of their breath heated the flushed skin of Killua’s ear. “Do you want to take him, sweet Killua?” they asked. “Would you like to unwrap him the way I have?”

Killua had known a hundred different kinds of suffering before he could even write his own name, had cut his teeth on leather straps until torture barely even fazed him, but the gentle intimacy of Hisoka’s words on his cheek stuttered his breath like no kind of pain ever had. His lungs shorted, broke their rhythm entirely, shouted for reserves of adrenaline that Killua hadn’t felt since the dire months of the chimera ant event.

Hisoka threaded one hand through the fine hair at the nape of Killua’s neck, just slowly enough that his fight and flight reflexes remained hovering and indecisive. They drew him up, closer, until their lips brushed the shell of his ear.

“Have you thought about us?” Hisoka whispered. “My hands spreading his thighs? My mouth against his skin? Have you imagined us fucking slowly—or was it quickly? Would you like to see how his bruises blossom under my fingers?”

“Nnng,” Killua said, instead of something actually helpful.

The thing was, Hisoka wasn’t bad looking. The makeup was kind of weird, but Killua had been a hunter for half a decade and he had definitely seen weirder. The magician had a kind of dark charisma, confidence perfect enough to make you second guess even the most obvious lie. Killua had never found fear a particularly attractive force, but the confidence—well, he had loved Gon’s certainty before he loved Gon himself. Hisoka’s hand, as it traced down his chest, the pinpricks of those nails, made heat bloom between his legs.

Killua muffled a bewildered moan under his own bitten lip.

“Oooh,” Hisoka said, drawing back just enough to glance down the length of him. “I thought so. Well, since we’re sharing, here’s something you should know about me.” Their hand hovered, teasing, above the point of no return. “ _I’ve_ imagined _you,_ ” they murmured. “You… and Gon… how lovely your paleness would look against his darkness…”

Abruptly, they pulled back. They smiled that bland smile again, shifting their shoulders in the smallest shrug. “So if you came here to ask whether you could fuck Gon, the answer is sure.”

“Uh,” Killua said. His breath was still coming in uneven pants.

Hisoka turned and moved across the hotel room towards the sizable cavern of the walk-in closet. “But,” they said, lifting an index finger as they strolled away, “if you came to ask for a _ménage a trois_ …”

Killua watched the smooth swing of their hips, as they disappeared into their closet. The moment they stepped out of the room, it was as if Killua had been bludgeoned by the entirety of the last five minutes in one go. He grabbed for the edge of the shelf to steady himself and left finger-shaped depressions in the wood.

Illumi had told him once, during the most mortifying lesson of his entire career as a Zoldyck, that when he reached the stage of _adolescence_ , he would begin to experience _arousal_ , which could impede _good judgment_ in the field _._

“If you find yourself in a situation where your sexual longing supersedes your ability to accomplish your objective,” Illumi had said, standing in the middle of the teaching dungeon, “then you must retreat to the manor immediately and work to gain a better mastery of your desires.” Killua, about seven years old at the time, would have preferred being electrocuted with the cattle prod again. It was a hellish and unnecessary lesson. Definitely, he had thought, nobody would be dumb enough to get distracted by a crush in the middle of a life or death situation.

Killua, circa nineteen-years-old, was beginning to understand what his eight-year-old self had not been able to.

Hisoka reappeared, one hand on the entryway to the closet. They had pulled off their shirt, and didn’t seem to care. “Was that everything?” they asked, brightly.

Killua looked at the door. To get out of here, he would need to walk past the closet. To walk past the closet…

“That was everything,” he answered, inching away, his back against the near wall.

“Please don’t jump out the window,” Hisoka said, settling a hand on their hip. “I’m not actually made of money, all appearances to the contrary.”

Killua froze. Okay. Maybe not that way then.

Hisoka sighed, looking almost—fond? It was hard to place the expression on their predatory features. “You _are_ darling,” they said. “Come this way, please.”

Killua hesitated, for just a moment, but what was the alternative? He took a steadying breath and drew himself up, shuffling his expression into an approximation of disinterest. He marched across the floor.

Hisoka reached out and halted him with just the prinprick press of a fingernail. A lock of blood-red hair had slipped free while they were changing out of their shirt, and it hung curling at the edge of their forehead. It made them look more human. Killua had the sudden, disconcerting thought that Hisoka was only mortal too—fallible, limited, and full of their own personal peculiarities. It was almost too strange to really contemplate. He’d spent so much time thinking of the older hunter as a sort of monolith, unchanging and unchangeable. He wondered if this was how Gon saw them, all the time.

Hisoka tipped their head, curiously. “What _are_ you thinking with that serious look on your face,” they murmured. It was a question that didn’t seem to expect an answer.

Killua shuttered his expression again. “Just wondering why you took your shirt off,” he said, pulling away a step. “You can’t seriously think I’m about to get nasty with you.”

“You might remember that I have a date tonight,” Hisoka replied. “I do my best to look presentable.”

Killua peered past them. It looked like Hisoka did more than aim for _presentable_ , from the fullness of that collection. Did they keep a wardrobe of that size in two different cities? How _could_ they?

“Okay, well,” Killua started. He crossed his arms. “Have… fun, I guess. Or whatever.”

“You _could_ come along,” Hisoka said, turning from him to rifle through hanger after hanger of nearly identical undershirts. “Gon would be ecstatic, I’m sure.”

The door was free and clear! Killua strode that way as fast as he could without breaking into a full-out run. “No thanks,” he said firmly, as he wrenched the door open. “I’m not cut out for third-wheeling.”

In his wake, Hisoka eyed the closed door with sly interest.

 

 

Killua had been trained from birth with two goals in mind: stealth, and lethality. It might surprise those unfamiliar with the discipline of Assassination to find that stealth takes precedence over lethality. When Killua was six years old, he had scaled the old tower on the Zoldyck estate in five minutes, in absolute silence. This was notable because the tower’s insides were comprised of rotted, unstable, squeaky construction, and because it had previously taken Illumi Zoldyck five minutes and fifteen seconds to scale the same obstacle course. Years would show that Illumi was not actually a particularly subtle person, but at the time it was something of a wonder to the whole family.

With the addition of Zetsu to Killua’s repertoire, it would be safe to say that the young hunter was almost impossible to detect in any situation where he did not want to be detected.

The gargoyle built into the northwest corner of the hotel would have been a stylish place to wait while stalking a friend, but then the gargoyle on the northwest corner of the hotel was built with a carrying capacity of maximum 100 lbs, and was exposed to the view from the street if anyone just happened to look upward, and so Killua was stalking his friend from the balcony of the apartment across the street while its occupant watched TV on the other side of the curtains, none the wiser.

In truth, Killua wasn’t sure what he expected to see. It wouldn’t have entirely surprised him to catch Hisoka pulling Gon into an alleyway and having their way with him in broad daylight—well, he amended, somewhat broad twilight. The sun was setting across the city, lighting up the sky in shades of bloody red and ocean blue. Most likely all he was going to see was two people walking through the crowds of the York Shin, engaged in conversation that Killua couldn’t hear. Alluka had given him several complicated, concerned looks as he shrugged on his stolen street clothes, but she hadn’t forced him to stay (even though they both knew she could have).

He couldn’t even say for sure why he was so determined to do this tonight. All he knew was that he had never really seen Hisoka and Gon alone together, when Gon wasn’t trying to reassure him and Hisoka wasn’t trying to perform their unnerving brand of casual menace. Killua had never bothered to wonder what Hisoka was like when they were in private, out from under the spotlight, but that moment in the hotel room today had sparked a relentless curiosity. _Was_ there a person underneath all that? For years Killua had wondered what Gon saw in the magician, other than an admittedly impressive pair of thighs and unremitting _persistence_.

Earlier that year, in the spring, Gon had called him up out of nowhere, in the middle of the afternoon, and informed him that Hisoka was going to be moving to live with him. _Some of the time_ , Gon had clarified _. I mean, they’re still keeping the room at the Arena_. Killua had been in the middle of making crepes for Alluka, as an apology for some argument they had had earlier in the day either about public schools or permanent housing—they had argued a lot this year, mostly about the same two things—and he had nearly dropped his eggs on the floor. And then Gon, the bastard, had added in this offhanded tone that he had broken a bunch of Hisoka’s bones earlier that morning while they were fighting to the death.

“To the—to the death?” Killua had shouted.

“Sure, I mean, not really. It’s no big deal.”

“It sounds like a big deal!”

“It’s fine, it’s fine. Nobody died. Anyways, I just wanted you to know first! Technically Leorio knew first, but that’s because Hisoka told him—I was gonna wait until I told you. You’re the first person to hear it from me, promise!”

“Back up,” Killua had said, clutching the phone with both floury hands. “You broke their bones? Are you okay?”

“Huh? Yeah, I guess. I'm a little cut up. Leorio says I might have a concussion too, but usually when I have a concussion I throw up and I didn’t so maybe I don’t.”

“Why were you fighting them?” Killua shouted. At this point, Alluka had wandered into the kitchen to see what all the fuss was about—he remembers how she had taken the mixing bowl from his hands and carefully cracked the eggs for him, pretending not to listen.

“I think it was… like a relationship thing,” Gon told him, “like Hisoka wanted us to go all the way?”

Later, Killua remembered this more than anything else about the conversation—the vividness of the thought that followed Gon’s idle speculation: of those two grinding on the forest floor in the dark, Hisoka’s golden eyes blown to black discs in the fraction of the moment before Killua tore the two hunters apart. The thought was a scattering of leaves, low moaning, the pattern of moonlight on broad shoulders, and now blood that had not been there on the night it happened. The whole memory welled with new, superimposed blood.

“—But I talked them around,” Gon was saying, and probably had been for a while, “so now they’re moving over here. Some of the time.”

“How,” Killua snarled, nails fracturing the smooth countertop, “did you get from _death match_ to _cohabitation?_ ”

He could almost hear the shrug on the other end of the line. “It was Hisoka’s idea. Between you and me, I think they’re kind of confused right now.”

“ _They’re_ confused.”

The conversation had more or less swerved at that point, while Gon asked him about Alluka and the new apartment and he replied in automatic short sentences until finally passing the phone to Alluka. That had been the last the two of them really talked about it—the Hisoka Problem. There just didn’t seem to be any way to breach the gulf between Killua’s understanding of what couples did and Gon’s idea of what couples did. Honestly, Killua had always considered Gon to be the authority out of the two of them, and yet there was a _clear_ disconnect between the people on Alluka’s soap operas and whatever the hell Gon had gotten himself into. Killua tried to think back to what his parents had been like, but he could hardly remember seeing them both in the same room in the whole time he lived at home. They had been sort of old-fashioned about their marriage, he suspected.

After that conversation, Killua had gotten baffling updates from Kurapika a couple of times, generally reading something to the effect of “gon + hisoka fought again. if that bastard breaks gon’s arm one more time i’m going to take both of theirs.” The last of those texts had been three weeks ago, just before Killua came here to meet up with Gon. He received it just in time to spend the entire air-ship ride thinking about turning right the hell around the second they touched down, and never even leaving the harbor.

In the street below Killua’s perch, Gon paused amid the flow of bodies and lifted a scarf from his neck, wrapping it around Hisoka, who seemed bemused by the whole exercise. Killua shifted behind the plastic banana tree, attention snagged by the most minute weirdness in Hisoka's body language. There was something in the way they leaned into Gon's touch that didn’t quite fit with the neutral expression on their face. That was definitely different, whatever it was. Gon didn’t seem any changed from earlier that afternoon, but then, what had Killua expected? Deference? The day Gon let another person take the lead was the day that Killua would have to start checking everyone he knew for nen needles.

Killua trailed them down a series of roads, to the edge of the seasonal festival that set up camp in the park every winter. Killua himself had tickets to take Alluka this weekend, and had planned to invite Gon to come along too. He felt a souring sensation in his gut as he watched Gon tug Hisoka through the gates. Hisoka didn’t even look like they were happy about going, which wasn’t ironic so much as it was irritating. If they were going to cut Gon out of Killua’s life in yet another way, they could at least _look_ smug about it. Killua touched down on the far side of the entrance, just close enough to hear Gon say: “You’ll like it, I promise.”

The fair glittered and clamored, and up and down the aisles between the booths people were wearing masks. The man who had sold Killua his tickets had told him that the festival in York Shin was unlike anything elsewhere in the world, and he could see that there was something a little bit eerie about it already, bright with neon and huge blinking lights on strings, and masks that seemed to fall in a strange valley between cheerful and skeletal. Some of it reminded him of the winter holiday Kurapika had described once, the red brightness and the stars everywhere. Some of it reminded him of the autumn holiday he had seen in Zaban city once, the skeletal images and the morbid cheerfulness. He supposed they were about at the halfway point between both of those, whatever that might have to do with it.

Killua slipped a mask from the neck of a passing entertainer and pulled it on, grateful for the added anonymity of the grinning skull. With this, he could move in closer still.

He watched Gon and Hisoka move from attraction to attraction, as Hisoka snagged a caramelized apple from a vendor’s tray for Gon and then was subsequently badgered into leaving a wad of uncounted bills on the counter in payment. Killua snuck a look at the pile as soon as they disappeared into the crowd again—that was enough for at least two apples. Still feeling a little bitter and slighted, Killua lifted one of the chocolate-covered ones for himself. He figured some candy was the least Hisoka owed him at this point.

The next time he got a clear look at the two of them, Hisoka was watching with interest as Gon inspected the bull-riding attraction. A man at the attached booth was shouting into the crowd that whoever could rack up the most consecutive seconds without being thrown would win a cash prize at the end of the night. The civilians around them were eyeing the bulls with trepidation and interest—in a city this size, probably most of them had never seen a live cow before. Before going into the NGL, Killua hadn’t either. It was _massive_ , big even for an already big species, not much different than the wild pigs they had hunted during the hunter’s exam. For a moment Killua forgot how old he was, standing wide-eyed like a preteen in front of a huge new world that was finally proving to be as interesting as he had always hoped.

And then Gon hopped the fence.

Killua sighed, slumping against the support beam of a rickety rollercoaster. Of course he would go, how could he resist? Gon shook hands with the proprietor, wrote his contact information on a slip of paper, and then clapped his hands together. Killua had a mental image of a what cowboy ought to look like—weathered, hard-faced, imposing—and it was so different from Gon that the result was kind of hilarious. He wasn’t the child he used to be, but he was still a little small for a fully grown man, and as he bounced on his heels under the yellow light of the exhibit’s rudimentary ceiling, he didn’t really seem to have changed at all from the day Killua had met him.

Killua’s eyes flitted back to Hisoka. They were leaned over the railing, forearms crossed, eyes glittering. That was a familiar look, but Killua didn’t see what was so interesting about—

Gon vaulted onto the bull’s broad back, without waiting for any assistance, and suddenly the inside of the ring was chaotic with stamping hooves and swinging horns. Gon grinned against the spotlight, his hair wild, his thighs flexing, and to Killua he seemed to all but float over the writhing storm that was the massive beast. His shirt fluttered, revealing straining abs that curled and stretched with each toss. Killua looked over to Hisoka again. They were licking their lips absentmindedly, barely blinking. Oh, so that was it, then.

Killua did have to admit, there was something… mesmerizing about it. About Gon, in his natural element. Killua had always been weak for Gon when he was acting all determined and excited.

The bull gave one last heave and managed to slam its own side against the walls of the ring. Gon flipped off just in time to avoid having his leg crushed, and he landed in a cloud of sawdust at the center of the ring to the sound of wild applause, waving up to Hisoka with a smile that said, _yes, I_ am _fantastic_. Hisoka returned the smile, something softer than Killua had ever seen on those thin, dangerous lips. Like the loose curl of hair before, it made them look disconcertingly human. It occurred to him that Hisoka went out of their way to look a little bit _other_ than human, between the face paint and the strange costumes, and probably Killua had been falling for that illusion since day one. Hisoka was bizarre, and extremely powerful, but Hisoka was only a person at the end of the day and _that—_ Killua understood all at once, like a camera bulb flashing to light—had been what Gon saw in them.

The thought troubled him for the next hour, as he tailed Gon and Hisoka from attraction to attraction. Hisoka had been a child once. Hisoka was going to die someday, either from slipping up in a fight or from something as simple and common as illness. He imagined Hisoka stretching their feet at the end of a long day, sleepily washing their face in the mirror in the mornings—too strange, way too strange. Had Hisoka ever had their heart broken? Did they want things other than violence and bloodshed?

Gon broke off at last, jogging towards a Test Your Strength that purported to be Hunter Association quality. That was false advertising for sure, but something about it seemed to have caught his attention anyways. Hisoka settled onto a bench under a pavilion strung with glittering star lights, watching Gon’s retreating back with that same weirdly soft expression from before. The scarf around their neck hung loose, duller than the bright blues and white of the rest of the outfit, obviously not necessary but still, for some reason, there. It looked too soft for such a sharp person.

“Killua,” they called.

Killua froze, heart beating rabbit-fast in his chest. It had to be a bluff, there was no way he was going to flinch and give away his position. Hisoka couldn’t possibly know—

Hisoka’s eyes settled on his, through the protective shadow of the skull mask. “Killua,” they said again, “please come take a seat, you’ve been on your feet all evening.”

Killua hesitated, but there was no point in pretending now, was there? And he sure wasn’t going to be caught running off with his tail tucked between his legs _now_. He picked his way through the crowd, trying to look nonchalant, and stepped up onto the pavilion.

“Hisoka,” he said.

Hisoka patted the seat beside them. Sure enough, they had left just enough space for Killua to sit comfortably. Killua considered that at this point he was probably in as much danger sitting next to the magician as standing across from them, and it was probably better to appear less unnerved than he was. He took the seat.

“How did you know?” he asked.

“At the bullpen,” Hisoka said, with a little flickering grin, “when you were watching Gon. Your Zetsu flickered. I don’t blame you, he does have that effect, doesn’t he?”

Killua scowled behind his mask. Damn rookie mistake.

“I’m curious as to what you think you’ll accomplish like this,” Hisoka said. They pulled a bag of candy from the pocket of their coat, the star shaped buttons around the cuff clicking against each other, and offered Killua a little peppermint femur.

“I’m just making sure you’re not gonna try to kill him again,” Killua retorted. He snatched the candy out of Hisoka’s hand and shoved it into his own mouth. “I heard you fought him last month. I thought you guys were done with that.”

“It’s good to remember what you are from time to time,” Hisoka replied, cryptically. They bit the knob off another femur and said nothing else for a long moment. Finally, they added, “I wonder why you decided that tonight of all nights was a good time to begin your protective surveillance.”

Killua didn’t dignify that with an answer. Instead, he crossed his arms and said, “So how come you didn’t want to come here? Seems like you fit right in.”

Hisoka pulled the peppermint bone they had been sucking from their lips, testing the needle-sharp point against the pad of one finger. “I’m not fond of crowds,” they said. “Not being submerged in them, at any rate.”

Killua squinted at them, drawing back. Was that—but Hisoka would never reveal a personal weakness like that, even an irrelevant little one, not to someone who was clearly lined up to antagonize them, so what was the point of that lie, except for the sake of lying, but it wasn’t even an interesting lie—

Hisoka flicked the makeshift spike across the pavilion, embedding it in the wood of the support beams. It trembled there against the force of its launch. “I do enjoy watching people, though,” they added, “and as Gon promised, the fair is a very good place to do that.”

Killua looked from the peppermint projectile to the magician sitting beside him, the red and blue brightness of their face paint tonight the same color as the neon above them. “What’s your game?” he asked, meaning everything—the confessions, the invitation to sit, the night, their whole convoluted relationship. He gestured at nothing.

“I have to pick just one?” Hisoka replied. They huffed melodramatically, falling back into their seat in such a way that their coat fell around their shoulders, revealing pale skin and the hint of bicep. Killua narrowed his eyes at the show. “I think it’s funny,” they said, “that you know I am a liar, but you keep asking me these kinds of questions.”

In the throng beyond the placid island of the pavilion, dancers were weaving through the sea of people who parted around them—their faces were painted into jagged cartoon smiles, triangles over the eyes and noses. Cheerful and morbid, like the hunter sitting next to him. Killua suspected Gon had noticed the resemblance too.

“You asked me what my game is,” Hisoka said. “Why don’t I tell you the rules. You, sweet Killua, may choose to take that mask off and remain here with me, until Gon comes back. You can then spend the rest of the evening with both of us—we will stay until midnight at least, when the ghost dancers perform—and if you don’t enjoy yourself, you can leave us at the gate. But,” they went on, lifting a finger, “if you do enjoy yourself, you will come back to the hotel room with us, and you will try… everything… once.”

Hisoka’s nail was sharp, elegantly pointed. At some point they had painted it the same shade of blue as the tear drop on their cheek, a color which it had not been earlier that day. The game was a pointless gamble, as much a waste of time as this whole night of stalking had been. The problem was, Killua couldn’t leave a pointless gamble on the table at the best of times. Why else was he here, if he was going to be honest with himself? And he kept thinking of what Hisoka had said in the hotel room, of what they would look like together, and the loop didn’t want to turn off.

He’d be lying if he said he wasn’t just a little curious.

In the distance, somewhere beyond the nearest line of booths, there was a resounding _crack_ and a dull metal sound, and a shout—without thinking, Killua met Hisoka’s eye. From the smug little smile it was clear they were thinking the same thing: Gon had succeeded in breaking the strength tester.

Killua was probably kidding himself thinking that this could end well—that three people could balance something as finicky as a relationship between them, that Hisoka might not have an agenda beyond seeing where the night could go, that Gon could return the feelings that Killua had been strangling since he was twelve—but maybe luck would be on his side for once. At the very least, he was getting tired of following Gon around every time some weird dating thing happened.

Killua removed the mask from his face, and watched Gon racing through the crowd, sheepish and bright and carrying an armful of candy.

 

 

At the dunking booth Gon lost his temper with the man inside the booth and pitched a ball so hard that it broke the target off and all but caught fire in mid-air. At the games of chance Gon had to physically pick Killua up and drag him away from the third consecutive losing bet.

In the district set up for carnival games, Hisoka was mistaken for an employee and ended up directing three rounds in a shooting gallery before the actual employee stumbled in, late for his shift, and was informed that he had to beat Hisoka in at least one game before he could take his position back. He lost all three rounds. Once Hisoka was satisfied that he had learned a valuable lesson about work ethic, by which point the man was a panicky mess, they cheerfully handed over the employee ID tag. The employee managed to pin it on with about one minute to spare before his supervisor made the rounds through that region of the arcade.

In the rock-climbing attraction Killua got so competitive that he completely lost track of who he was trying to be petulant and standoffish with, and let Hisoka give him a victory kiss after he made it back down the wall a whole half second faster than Gon. This was followed by a brief but turbulent period of increased petulance and standoffishness once he realized what he had done.

At midnight Gon pulled them both up to sit on the titanic creaking axel of the ferris wheel, so that they could watch the progression of the ghost dancers through the alleys, making their way to their stage. He pulled Killua down to rest against him, underneath a great steel angle of supporting strut. Killua felt his face go bright red, brighter and hotter the longer Gon held him there, silent and unconcerned. Killua still hadn't said anything about why he was here tonight. He had been mentally preparing any number excuses as they made their way through the festival—both for why he was here and why he had to leave, immediately, on his own. But the way Gon pulled him in now, allowing their shoulders to meet like puzzle pieces, with his arm tucked loosely through Killua's, said that maybe he already knew. Killua allowed himself a moment to be super pissed off about this; it was just like Gon to keep Killua sweating while he went around without a care in the world. Still it was... nice. Sitting here. Killua shot a glance at Hisoka, who had perched close by with one leg hung over the edge, their chin rested serenely on top of the other knee.

There were a couple different ways this could all be rationalized. Could be that Hisoka was honestly a pervert of simple designs, who really was just that interested in having a threesome with a younger man they found attractive. Could be that this was all a small cog in an elaborate, confusing scheme that would only become clear months from now when the last penny dropped. Or it could be, Killua considered, all of that, with something disconcertingly human mixed in as well. He thought of the odd little smiles he had seen (had been allowed to see, at least) in the course of the evening. It wasn't the first time that Killua had glimpsed the edge of something genuine, and difficult to classify, underneath the flimsy layers of lies, but it was the first time that Killua thought maybe he could almost touch it. 

Maybe Hisoka was capable of wanting to make another person happy. Maybe they were capable of wanting Gon to be happy, even if it was just that they liked the way he looked better when he was happy than when he wasn't.

Maybe Killua was a gift for Gon.

He wasn't sure how to feel about that. It was a little bit annoying to be passed around like a slice of birthday cake, but it was also kind of amazing to be that valued—to be wanted that much, by Gon, who was so depressingly difficult to get a read on. Years of resentment were rolling back on themselves, revealing a pink, tissue-soft core of longing that had grown up in Killua unawares like a cancer. He was only just beginning to comprehend how unwanted he had felt, the night that he found them together in the forest.

Hisoka caught his gaze, and smirked. The slowly revolving wheel cast a dim shadow as it passed in front of them,  quieting for a moment the unearthly riot of neon blues and reds, and leaving only pale, human skin behind. Killua was too battle-hardened to underestimate a creature like Hisoka, but each successive revolution of the night seemed to be taking him closer and closer to a simultaneous truth, too delicate to lay hands directly on.

Down below them, the doll-sized figures of the ghost dancers were sweeping through acrobatic lifts and graceful dives, their false faces bright with morbid cheerfulness. Killua had never really been much for the performing arts—short attention span, and a little bit jaded—but he'd sit through just about anything if Gon asked him to. His mind drifted from the competent (if limited) motions of the dance, out to the whole spectacle of the stage. What did people see in this? He supposed it was as much the context as the dance itself. The masks and the lights and the props, making up a total effect of something otherworldly. But the performers, whoever they were underneath, were still only people.

When the three of them passed under the glowing arch of the fair's exit, some time later, Killua said nothing at all about heading off by himself.

 

 

By the glow of that porcelain lamp Killua had been eyeing earlier in the day, Hisoka's room had the secretive look of a conspirator's den, lit with dim, delicate strands of yellow light. Killua hung back in the doorway, suddenly taken with a case of cold feet arctic enough to petrify him. Inside the warm darkness of the room, Hisoka and Gon were pulling at each other, or pushing—some kind of stalemate held them straining against each other, bright eyed and full of barely contained kinetic energy. They looked like they'd forgotten all about Killua. With a tremendous push of power, as much physical as it was nen cracking the air, Gon forced Hisoka to sit on the edge of the bed, wrists gripped in both hands. Inch by inch Hisoka's arms were forced down, until they relaxed into languor at the first brush of cotton against fingertips. Their shoulders settled into the same coy little shrug Killua had seen at the fair, legs crossing so that the toe of one boot pressed into Gon's stomach.

Killua wondered if they did this often. It would explain how seamlessly Gon settled onto his knees, carefully unlacing the shoe and slipping it off, tracing his hands over the arching curve of the calf to find the top of the stocking where it tucked over their knee. There was something in the gentleness of that motion that made Killua want to hide his flushing face behind his hand and duck away, but also keep watching, if both things were possible.

"So," Gon said, without looking up, "did you make up your mind? We can wait, only we should probably close the door now."

Killua jumped like he was a toddler being electrocuted for the first time again, and slammed the door closed behind him before he could think any harder about which side of it he actually wanted to be on. Hisoka watched him from the bed with laughing eyes, regal as a king lounging on their throne.

Gon rolled down the other stocking and stood again, turning the light of his smile on Killua. Killua looked away. Gon made his way back to the doorway with the same care Killua had seen him use to approach wild things, back on Whale Island. What was he, some spooked swampdeer? Killua wrinkled his nose and settled more firmly against the carpet.

"You can leave any time you want," Gon said, taking his hands. "Do you wanna go now?"

Killua risked a glance back at his friend's face and nearly caved right then, but he managed to hold on by the grip of his metaphorical fingernails. This was his last chance to get out before he swam too deep—did he really think he could stand it? Close as they were, close as they _could_ be, Killua was never going to be Gon's one and only. Was that something he could be satisfied with? Was he going to get weird about having sex with someone who probably wouldn't know where to start being monogamous if his life depended on it?

Gingerly, he pulled their joined hands closer. No, he was overthinking it. Gon was Gon, and he was never going to be any other way. If Killua was wanted, really wanted, then it didn't matter who else Gon wanted too. It was enough to be close in their own kind of way, just like they always had been.

"I'll stay," Killua said. He looked down at their hands. "Uh. I haven't really. I mean I've been taking care of Alluka since I was fourteen, I haven't really had time to—"

Gon swooped in with a kiss that was as playful as it was brief. "Don't worry," he said, as he rocked back, "everybody starts somewhere. You'll be fine."

Killua pressed his hand to his lips, although it was still tangled with Gon's. The skin was hot with echoes of his touch.

"Do you want just me," Gon asked, "or do you want both of us?"

Killua glanced past him, at Hisoka, who had pulled off their shirt sometime in the last few minutes. They lifted an eyebrow in silent, smug challenge. Killua narrowed his eyes. 

"Both of you," he said, putting as much casual disinterest into the words as he could manage when his whole face was still tingling and red.

Gon pumped a fist, finally letting go of Killua's hands to really give it the full _oomph_. "I was hoping you'd say that," he said, spinning away like an overexcited top. He crashed into Hisoka, knocking them both backwards onto the bedspread. He kissed them like he was trying to pry them open, fingers interlocked with fingers over Hisoka's head. Killua noticed the slightest trembling there, and realized Hisoka was pushing upwards against Gon, straining even as Gon forced them down into compliance.

Opened up like that, pinned underneath the strength of an even stronger body, Hisoka was—tempting, in a way they had never looked before. The hard muscles and the pale skin that had only been distantly attractive to Killua before were so suddenly, immediately hot now, touchable like they had never seemed. If Gon could touch them, then Killua must be able to as well.

Killua slunk into the room, toeing off his shoes and pulling off his clothes as, on the bed, Hisoka hooked a heel around Gon’s back and dragged him closer. The two of them moved like a machine, interlocked and burning hot, and Killua wasn’t sure how there was supposed to be room for him in this equation. His stomach dropped with uncertainty. Finally Gon drew back, tongue dragging against tongue as their mouths parted, and stepped away. Hisoka, lips wet and pink and curved upwards at the corners, curled a summoning finger in Killua’s direction. Killua looked to Gon for some kind of confirmation, but Gon was busy undressing and so, hiding his trepidation, Killua came forward.

“Let’s start simple,” Hisoka said, running their tongue along the swell of their lower lip. “Kiss me.”

This time, when Killua looked to Gon, Gon was already there. Honestly, Killua kind of lost track of his train of thought there, looking at that expanse of tan, smooth skin. And Killua had thought he was distracted when they were hanging around the gym. Gon guided him down, hands on his waist and shoulder, to lie against Hisoka’s chest. Oh, a kiss. He was supposed to kiss…?

Hisoka pressed one finger under his chin and finished guiding him in. Their mouth was warm—warmer than Killua expected, and traced with echoes of peppermint that sparked against his tongue. Whoa. He felt Hisoka’s fingers settle lightly against the nape of his neck and remembered with a dizzying suddenness how alien this person had always seemed to him, how titanic and unreachable. But their lips were the same delicate flesh as Killua’s, their bare chest as solid and vulnerable as his own. A crackle of unexpected desire raced through Killua. He pressed into the kiss, urgently sucking and pulling in search of some reaction that would confirm that humanity.

A moan broke against Killua’s mouth, a ripple like a shiver passing beneath him, and then abruptly Hisoka had flipped him. He bounced against the comforter, the world inverted as Hisoka loomed, grinning wickedly, above him.

“Quick study,” they purred.

Gon wrapped his arms around their body, dragging his hands downward to pull Hisoka’s pants loose around their hips. Hisoka drew themself up against Gon’s chest, leaning into him as he traced a thumb down into tented cotton and lifted free heavy, darkened flesh. Hisoka’s face was turned away, their nose buried in Gon’s neck, but they were watching Killua as he drew his uneven breaths.

“Lesson number two,” they said, “observe.”

Killua sat up on his elbows as Hisoka slunk forward, so that their noses could almost have brushed. Their back arched in a deep, showy curve. Gon’s hands traveled down the tightly muscled expanse of back to squeeze handfuls of ass and spread them, to Hisoka's crooning approval. He must have grabbed that bottle of lube while Killua was busy making out. His fingers glimmered slightly in the lamplight and then slid out of view. The low, taunting fall of Hisoka's eyelids said that they knew precisely what Killua was thinking—Killua had spent enough time in various men's locker rooms to have heard a thing or two about the way the world supposedly worked, what kind of person was supposed to do what. Honestly he'd kind of assumed that by stepping into this room he had officially given himself up as everybody's fucktoy. This twist of events was more of a relief than he expected it to be.

Hisoka slipped one arm and then the other over Killua's shoulders, hanging probably half of their whole oppressive weight off him. Well if they thought that was going to knock Killua over, they had another thing coming.

"You might be thinking," Hisoka murmured in his ear, "will I get to fuck them too?"

"I wasn't thinking that," Killua lied.

"Sorry, but," Hisoka said, and broke off into a pleased little sigh, rolling their shoulders like a cat, "that's a privilege you'll have to _earn_."

"How the hell did Gon earn it?" Killua hissed, because apparently competitiveness doesn't just stop at the bedroom door.

Hisoka shifted, just the slightest readjustment of poise, and then a simmering heaviness rose up around them. That was striking intent, a coiling in the aura that preceded violence—Killua snapped his gaze up to Gon, who hopefully knew what the fuck to do with a murderous python when it was already sitting coiled in your lap. But Gon was just smiling, unperturbed. His hands travelled over the thickness of Hisoka's thighs and settled firmly into the joint where they met lower abdomen, like he were grasping for handholds, and then he slammed forward. It was merciless. Hisoka seized up around Killua, with a low sharp sound as if they had been punched, and fell forward. _That_ one successfully knocked Killua back onto the bed. He stared up at Hisoka, who managed to pull themself onto their elbows above him now, as Gon pounded into them and shook their whole frame with each thrust. They let out a breathy, satisfied _ahhh._

Killua had seen them clouded with pleasure before, in vastly less appropriate circumstances, but never this close. He could feel the heavy breaths, still faintly sweet with peppermint, could see how their eyes went glassy under the relentless assault.

"Oh," Gon said, as Hisoka shifted back bodily to meet him. "That's so good, Hisoka. You're so beautiful."

Hisoka hummed in absentminded agreement. How could they stand to let Gon talk so sweetly while he was being so brutal with their body? The serene dissonance, the gentle coos against the hard jerks of that body, made Killua's heart stutter.

"Killua," Gon said, "are you alright?"

Unable to even begin to process the bright softness of Gon's voice, Killua simply nodded.

"I wish I could kiss you now," Gon sighed, "you look so nice down there. Hisoka, will you kiss him for me?"

Hisoka's eyes lit on Killua, as if they were seeing him for the first time, and for a moment the cloudy daze sharpened into a hunger that was absolutely terrifying in such close quarters. They sealed their mouth against Killua's, desperate and messy, pressing tighter each time Gon shoved them forward. Killua wriggled underneath the attention, hands skating across cotton towards his own aching cock. He wasn't sure... he thought maybe he shouldn't touch yet, but. _Nnnn._  A new wave of urgency throbbed through him as Hisoka broke into wet gasps against his lips. They were coming undone against him.

"Oops," Gon muttered. He pulled back, cock slipping free measure by torturously slow measure. "I got carried away there. You almost came."

Hisoka moaned obscenely, half misery and half elation, arching into nothing. They bit down on Killua's lip, as if they were trying to stifle some still more violent urge. Gently, Gon pulled them off of him. Without Hisoka's weight on his chest, Killua felt weirdly untethered. He kneaded his own thighs, not quite willing to be the first person to touch himself, his nails sharper and harder than he remembered making them. This night, he was certain, was gonna be how he died. Nice world, been good knowing it.

And then Gon was bending down over him, pulling him up as well. Killua leaned into his touch, the hand on his arm and the leg between his own, like he'd never allowed himself to do before. It had never seemed possible that he could stand this close to the light, and even if it burned him eventually this moment alone was absolutely, totally worth it. Could he get Gon to touch every part of him? Officially abandoning his (failed, anyways) attempts to keep his cool, Killua rested his forehead in the crook of Gon's shoulder and sunk against him, palms pressed flat to the wings of his shoulder blades and smoothing down the length of his back.

He hadn't expected to feel so relieved when Gon's hand came up so easily to wrap around him in return. Gon made it seem like the most natural thing in the world, and if Killua has been nursing any secret fear that Gon was only testing out a whim, or that he would change his mind, the earnesty of that touch pretty much put it to rest. So Killua _was_ desirable, and desired, and wanted here after all. 

Like he understood exactly what Killua was thinking, Gon took hold of Killua's cock and Killua very nearly made a sound of relief that would have kept him awake in embarrassment for the rest of his natural life. Gon stroked lightly, and the warm firmness of his circled fingers undid Killua completely. He grabbed Gon by the shoulders to keep himself steady.

"That's nice, isn't it?" Gon asked. His thumb rolled over the delicate tip of Killua's cock. "Do you like it?"

Killua tried to swallow but his mouth had gone dry. He nodded.

"Tell me you like it," Gon coaxed, pressing brief little kisses against Killua's mouth.

"I—like it," Killua managed. Who had taught Gon to talk like this? Surely not Hisoka.

Gon smiled brightly, which was a reward of its own, and then looked past Killua in some silent conversation. He let go, leaving a flush of hot longing wherever his fingers had been, and pressed another brief little kiss against Killua.  

"I think we should be extra nice to you, since it's your first time," Gon said.

"What?" Killua said, scowling, "You don't have to take it _easy_ on me, I can do anything you can do."

"No you can't," Gon sing-songed, and abruptly pushed Killua back into Hisoka's lap. They had settled down near the end of the bed, and Killua fit snugly between their carelessly spread thighs as they reeled him back against their chest. A thrill of something primal shot up Killua's spine at the realization of how warm and solid and heavy the body was at his back. Hisoka's nails scraped along his abs, following the dip and rise of each muscle in a shivery trail.

"Relax," Hisoka breathed, grinding their cock into the small of his back, "I'm not going to bite you."

Gon knelt in front of Killua and pushed his legs apart, and it was all Killua could do not to snap them back together against the intensity of his interest. With the pad of one finger, Gon swiped a bead of precum from the head. His touch was so overwhelming that Killua arched back against Hisoka, who moaned indulgently and clenched their nails on the skin of Killua's chest like a cat stretching their claws.

Being between the two of them was like being penned in the eye of a storm, the yellow light funneled down through the violet surge on every side. Privately, he suspected this was probably for the best, since he had no idea what the hell he was doing, but also it was a little bit much to process all at once.

Gon rested his forearms on either of Killua's thighs and nosed closer, the soft skin of his cheek stroking at the heat between Killua's legs. His lips parted, Killua could feel it against his own skin, and then his tongue dragged a wet slow stripe from the heavy base to the aching tip. Killua jerked in blind reflex as Gon opened his mouth around the head and swallowed it down, his throat hot and slick and so overwhelming that for a moment Killua felt nothing, saw nothing else.

It took him a long moment of panting and writhing to finally notice how Hisoka had rested over his shoulder, watching the proceedings with tangible delight.

"Isn't _that_ a delicious view," they remarked, their fingertips kneading heavy bruises into Killua's chest as if they were trying to hold themself in place. "You should make some noise Killua. How else will he know how much you're enjoying him?"

Killua shook his head, gripping desperately at Hisoka's thighs. No goddamn way was he going to—

Gon gave him a look that was just a little _too_ innocent, and then did something wicked with the satiny flat of his tongue at the same time that Hisoka pushed two elegant fingers into Killua's mouth and pried it open.

"Haa, ahhhck," Killua panted, too slack with surprise to simply bite down. The firm, sharp press of nails against his tongue sent a dizzy flutter of adrenaline through his throat and into his ribcage. His breaths came out high and pitched with little moans as Hisoka held him open, and his mouth watered. He gave in to the sounds surging out of him, eventually, because who could really blame him if Hisoka was the one forcing it?

Gon sucked and dragged at Killua's cock with his tongue, humming appreciatively every time Killua writhed in vain underneath him. An ache like a sweet pressure was building at the base of his spine, and when Gon licked over the weeping tip it abruptly burst, spilling cum onto Gon's tongue and lips so suddenly that the orgasm rendered Killua utterly helpless to resist. As Killua gasped, twitching underneath its tidal wave of pleasure, a hand gripped his cock and pulled, wringing something that was nearly pain from his screaming nerves. Another splash of cum hit Gon's cheek.

Killua blinked down at Gon, who swiped a splatter of it from his face and regarded his fingers with narrowed eyes.

"That wasn't nice," Gon said, looking just past Killua to where Hisoka was grinning, the upward twist of their lips tangible against Killua's neck.

"Oh dear," Hisoka said, giving Killua one last torturous stroke, "wasn't it?"

The last thing Killua really kept track of was Gon settling him back against the bed, gently and carefully, and dragging Hisoka into a kiss that was wet with traces of pale cum and smears of saliva. Killua blinked dimly at the shift, as smooth and quick as the transition in a dream. Gon practically growled as he threw Hisoka down onto the bed somewhere beside Killua's head.

 _Oof_ , he thought, staring up at the comparatively safe ceiling. Freaks of goddamn nature, the both of them. They weren't going to pry him out of this bed until noon tomorrow, though, he didn't care how fucking wild they got. Just listening to them was exhausting.

Killua drifted off to the sounds of delicate, struggling breaths, and a phantom memory of blue and red lights as they flashed against human skin. There was an awful lot more in the world than even he had ever thought he would see. Pretty good things. Pretty... exciting things.

Gon and Hisoka would notice much later, after they had worn themselves out, that Killua had managed to fall asleep with a bewildered smile still vaguely pressed to his lips.

**Author's Note:**

> Killua is one of those boys that wants to sleep immediately after getting his.
> 
> If you guessed the ulterior motive to this episode was "100% effective ways to make Illumi actually fight me" then you guessed right.


End file.
